In the Music Museum presents an alternative view of Western classical music, as heard through historical instruments rather than musical works. It provides a fascinating guide to one hundred and fifty instruments preserved in eighty collections around the world. The instruments include the earliest or most representative examples of specific models or shed light on musical practice in a unique way. Some tell a particular story through their connection with individual musicians, famous or otherwise, while others are controversial or difficult to interpret.

The chapters give readers the analytical tools needed to look at, listen to, and think about historical instruments and to understand how this knowledge can in turn help us better appreciate music. The analysis of each instrument begins, as in a music museum, by looking at it: noting how to relate what one sees with how the instrument sounds, and how those sounds influenced how music was played. From a prehistoric seashell horn to an eighteenth-century clavichord, historical instruments are the objects that produced the music of the past, and as such they are of fundamental importance. The extensive companion website has recordings and videos that showcase many of the instruments that are illustrated and discussed in the book.